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Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism

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Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository University of New Hampshire – Franklin Pierce Law Faculty Scholarship School of Law 1-1-2008 Review Essay: Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism Ann Bartow University of New Hampshire School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/law_facpub Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Law and Gender Commons, and the Other Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Ann Bartow, "Review Essay: Janet Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism," Vol. XXVI/2 THE WINDSOR Y.B. ACCESS JUST. 391 (2008). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Hampshire – Franklin Pierce School of Law at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Law Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JANET E. HALLEY SPLITDECISIONS: HOWAND WH1Y TO TAKE A BREAKFROMFEMINISM (PRINCETON, N.J.: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006) Ann M. Bartow* My overarching reaction to Janet Halley's recent book, Split Decisions:How and Why to Take a Breakfrom Feminism, can be summarized with a one sentence cli- ch&: The perfect is the enemy of the good.' She holds feminism to a standard of perfection no human endeavour could possibly meet, and then heartily criticizes it for falling short. Though Halley's myriad observations about feminism occa- sionally resonated with my own views and experiences, ultimately I remain un- convinced that taking a break from feminism would, for me, be either justified or productive. But I did (mostly) enjoy reading it. Halley is well read, cleverly pro- vocative, and a gifted writer. Below I give a somewhat glib and superficial over- view of the book, and my reactions to it. I explain why I think Halley is too hard on feminists generally, and on Catharine MacKinnon specifically. And I take her to task for being harshly critical of feminism without offering realistic, pragmatic, or lawyerly alternatives. You can't theorize your way into an abortion, or out of a rape. You can have to rely on a legal system that may fail you, in which case you can work to improve it so that others don't suffer as you did. This is part of the very essence of feminism, which Halley gives short shrift. I parsed Split Decisions the first time over a year ago in preparation for an "auth- or meets reader" session with Halley at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association in Berlin. There Halley was open to discussion of her book in a cordial and non-defensive way, which was a very pleasant surprise. Interviews I'd read with her about the book made her sound rather angry, and the book's introduction made her sound fearful and apprehensive about negative reactions the work would provoke. In consequence, some readers are gleefully anticipating the unleashing of a Feminist Flame War. Consider this closing paragraph of a re- view by University of Saskatchewan philosophy professor George Williamson: Ultimately, Halley is saying what only a woman of impec- cable feminist credentials could say. But even so, anyone fam- iliar with the bitterness of feminist in-fighting must be pes- simistic that even a balanced book such as this will be at all well-received, but rather is likely to be ferociously reviled and trashed.2 Yes, per Williamson only a brilliant, impeccable feminist would urge others to take a break from actual feminism, and only poorly credentialed, unbalanced and ferocious feminists would disagree that this is necessary. If these are the binary School of Law, University of South Carolina. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006). 2 George Williamson, Book Review of Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Breakjrom Feminism by Janet E. Halley, online: Metapsychology Online Reviews <http://metapsychology.mentalhelp. net/poc/viewdoc.php?type=book&id=3792&cn= 135>. (2008) 26 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 391 392 Windsor Yearbook ofAccess to justice 2008 options, put me squarely in the latter category. In fairness to Halley, Williamson seems to have missed Halley's description of herself as "only rarely and intermit- tently feminist,"' or perhaps he preferred to ignore any evidence that didn't fit his theory. In the chapter entitled "My Complete and Total Lack of Objectivity" Hal- ley writes that she hoped she "won't promote any of the contestants of feminism against it,"4 but it seems clear later doing just this is part ofwhat animates the pro- ject. Yet she is self-doubting in some places, praises feminism in others, and ends that particular chapter with the words "I admit it's impossible to get this right."5 Perhaps this is tacit acknowledgement that the perfect is the enemy of the good? No feminist theorist gets everything right all the time, any more than any other legal scholar. Nor does any feminist lawyer, or any lawyer. But feminism has done a lot of good for women, even as mistakes were made, and will be again. If this book turns people away from feminism that lacks perfection, can they achieve the same positive goals from the "splits between theories" where Halley would situate them? Can a judge or lawyer help anyone effectively without picking sides? Hal- ley never really explains how this will all work out in practice. It probably would have been a lot more fun to discuss this with her over a good bottle of wine than it was to write this review essay. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm writing this book review mostly in the first per- son singular, and in what I hope will be a jaunty and accessible manner, to echo Halley's linguistically playful approach in the book. Her charm, humour and fre- quent fussy, self-deprecating qualifiers disarmed me initially. But Halley's gener- ally friendly tone is belied by the violence of some of her language choices: splits; breaks; "beating back" the influence of Catharine A. MacKinnon; referring to some of her work as "the late MacKinnon" as if MacKinnon herself, as well as her influence, was dead; the deployment of the idiom "carrying a brief" for females (which connotes militant grudge holding); accusations of feminist "paranoia" and "bad faith;" characterization of challenging argument as "expert feminist at- tacks;" references to feminism's "dark side," its "vanquished" and its "prisoners of war," and repeatedly, permutations of the visceral phrase "feminism with blood on its hands," which startled and offended me every time I read it. I think anyone who has ever done any work in favour of abortion rights has been accused of hav- ing bloody hands by those who oppose women's freedom of choice, and Halley is far too smart to have interjected the expression and imagery unintentionally. I'm not sure what she intended with this. I'll concede that she got my attention, but it came linked to my enmity. I also resented Halley's reference to much missed feminist law professor Mary Joe Frug, who was brutally stabbed and murdered in 1991 by a person or persons yet unknown, just a few sentences before angrily writing that "the CLS conference is dead,"' killed, she suggests, by Robin West and "the late MacKinnon." I was lucky enough to hear Frug speak once, in the late 1980s when I was a law student, and I've read and appreciated her scholarship in the years since. Thinking about 3 Supra note 1 at 15. 4 Ibid. at 12. 5 Supra note 3. 6 Supra note I at 167. Vol. 26(2) Book Review: Split Decisions 393 what happened to her makes me want to weep, so I can only imagine what it is like for her friends and family. I don't much like it when people use her life or her death to make self-serving points about feminism. It is also unsettling that the MacKinnon references in this section of the book suggest that MacKinnon was a CLS conference participant, but a bit of research indicates this was not the case. That Halley implies she was and helped engineer the demise of the CLS confer- ence is perplexing. Halley prefaces a number of her framing sentences with the phrase "cards-on- the-table moment" as if the entire scholarly project was a high stakes poker game. Toward the end of the tome, where she analogizes feminism to an aging and blind but viciously barking dog,7 the "bitch" slur we feminists hear all too common- ly was perilously close to the surface. A couple of pages later she insultingly an- thropomorphizes feminism as adults on a playground who rush up at a little girl who has scraped her knee on a playground and cause her to cry with aggressive expressions of concern.' Well, Janet Halley, if we are going to indulge in juvenile name calling, maybe feminism is rubber and you are glue, and whatever you say about feminism bounces back and sticks to you. Halley begins her book by arguing (in a chapter pithily entitled "The Argu- ment," no less) that theory produces reality, and that politics, resource distribu- tion and sexuality are deeply contingent on theory that is embedded within fem- inism. The book, she says, is intended to alter reality by changing theory. And because Halley declares "This book--it's about sex," presumably Halley wants to change sex.
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